FAQ as usual Unless you meant the animation video which is in the news, Nelgirith's last post.
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People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.
- George Carlin

So, if people who pre-order now get Kraal+Staff of Asha along with Akasha+Edge of Chaos what do people who already pre-ordered the Collector or the Deluxe Digital get ? (since Kraal and the staff are part of those already)

Quote:So, if people who pre-order now get Kraal+Staff of Asha along with Akasha+Edge of Chaos what do people who already pre-ordered the Collector or the Deluxe Digital get ? (since Kraal and the staff are part of those already)

A friendly handshake and a heartfelt "Well done, laddy/lassy!"?
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Iron from Ice.

the game was originally supposed to be out by then and now we cant even have beta there?

why the sheogh are we forced to just play in the last stage of it, when there is nothing that we will be able to change?

the game would benefit more if UbiHole stopped seeing the beta as marketing, and released it ASAP

Obviously the insiders will have it earlier. Early enough for "major" changes I assume. And I do believe that it's the best idea. The community will hardly ever speak with one voice, so focusing on fedback from respected community members and long time players seems like a resonable option. Let's just sit back and enjoy the game when it comes.

It's kind of counter-intuitive, but the longer we wait for things the better the game will be. It's more expensive to have a longer development time and delays and waiting are a gift. Because I realise that, I'm trying so hard to not be disappointed. Totally am though, I wanted to play.

the game was originally supposed to be out by then and now we cant even have beta there?

why the sheogh are we forced to just play in the last stage of it, when there is nothing that we will be able to change?

the game would benefit more if UbiHole stopped seeing the beta as marketing, and released it ASAP

The reason for that must be that there are so many prejudiced people around that are ready to hate the game. When they would lay their hands on that unready version of the game, they will find the bugs and deficient parts and forgetting that it is a beta, they will say "It is not as good as Heroes 3, where is our Heroes 3!" and make their hate talk everywhere around the forums. So it is a right decision for me. That would affect the sales, all that hate talk I mean.
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Except the people who get to play the beta have already bought the game, so I doubt they already hate it.
It seems the point of the beta is only minor balancing, stability, fine tuning and so on. I don't think they are making room for major changes. Hopefully those will be made before the beta even starts (town screens hint hint )

I think it is obvious that UbiHole sees the beta as part of their marketing strategy. They do not want us to help find bugs faster than they can, speed up and improve the balancing progress and let people actually feel how the town windows etc are - they just want us to play the near-finished product that has no crashes or anything like that so it leaves a good impression on us and all potential reviews et cetera.

What pisses me off was that the beta was originally supposed to start around this time which is evident by the news feed and more likely, that Ubisoft actually set up the beta page around that time.
Now instead of getting it around now, we are going to test the LAST STAGE when pretty much all balancing and bug fixing will be done, we can't change any little thing we hate and well, the beta was ready around this time and I do not get why they have to push two months! And if this is part of their marketing strategy, then that is ridiculous. We have already bought the game so it is not like we will grow tired off it and they lose money because there is a pretty long beta.
Having a beta would also completly fix the news problem.
We would always have something to discuss.

Now look at the Starcraft beta. It was released the 17th of February, and it was an enourmous beta where getting a beta key took like 10 minutes because the fansites were basically giving them away. It was like an open beta and like now, it took like 4 seconds to find someone on battle.net

Starcraft 2 was released on the 27th of July.

That is a little over FIVE MONTHS.

So MMH6 is "supposed" (why even release a release date, its so stupid) to come out the 8th of September.
I am just taking a wild guess and saying that the beta will start on monday the 27th of June. When the game was originally supposed to be out lol. So essentially the beta will be the full game before it was polished. xD

Well 27th of June beta starts and it goes on to September 8th.
That is a bit over 2 months.

LOL. 2 months at the LATEST STAGE of the beta. xDDD

Starcraft had 5 months. A patch on DAY ONE. And then patches ATLEAST one time a week. There was contant testing, and communication from Blizzard. Blizzard actually listened to the fans and constantly changed, removed and added things to the game.

Why do I have a feeling that this wont be the case and this wont even by a serious beta, but just a part of their marketing plan?

I hope you understand that by excitement for the beta is because I love how the game looks like despite human heroes, horse fetish from UbiHole and the worst thing they have ever done, killing the towns. It still already looks better than H5, which I still like.
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill

Whilst on many counts I agree with Xerox that long beta testing is a good thing and more often then not leads to a far more polished product then any amount of in-house testing can achieve, one has to keep in mind that Blackhole and Ubisoft do not have the amount of staff and funding to equalize Blizzard in anything, they just have to much money.

Trying to create a beta longer then 2 months seems to me (as far as I know) a pretty feasible goal.
If the Beta starts that late I'd almost suggest they delay the game for another month (no matter how much I really do not want to wait another day let alone another month) to get more out of the beta.

At this point, either like Xerox is saying they are planning on using it for marketing, which to be honest, is a reasonably effective strategy though not one I like.
OR they recently changed their opinion on some game element they want to change before the beta (which MIGHT be what everybody is thinking but is unlikely if you ask me)
OR they stumbled upon a game-breaking problem that needs fixing before the beta.

Options 1 and 3 suck but option 2 might be a hopeful alternative.
But without further info, I personally think Xerox might be hitting closest to home here though.

Quote:
Obviously the insiders will have it earlier. Early enough for "major" changes I assume. And I do believe that it's the best idea. The community will hardly ever speak with one voice, so focusing on fedback from respected community members and long time players seems like a resonable option. Let's just sit back and enjoy the game when it comes.

Makes no sense , why would the mods of some forum provide better feedback . IMO , the intention of this 'closed beta' is just to buy the mods of forums so that they will focus the community opinion while avoiding the technical trouble of a real beta. As mentionned before , a fine beta needs a fair amount of people to be succesfull. (+1 to the one mentionning starcraft before).

And btw ,most if not all ppl who did preorder the game are long timer of heroes. I know I am.

So what will happen ? a too short beta with too few people and the real balance issues and subtle tweaks needed will only be discover after realease when a large number of people will be playing, and hence will be corrected in a patch late winter , as seen many times in many games.

The idea that only a few select people (VIPs) should be able to make major, major desicions on their own is horrible. I really hope that is not the case. How is it democratic?
To me, the VIPs function as vessels of communication between the developers and us, and vice versa.

But it is true that most likely, the fans will have to balance the game themselves with mods (like with H5, even in TotE) as the beta is so short and at the final stage of the game.

I do not see anything negative about having a beta now, other than the fear of the fans getting turned off because it is a beta and it might be unstable.
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill